Johnny's ltalian VA, Luca Ward, said Johnny was
originally in the game about half as much as he ended up being, but due to Keanu having such a good time and enjoying the project so much he requested more involvement and a larger role (or accepted a request from CDPR for a larger role, given his enjoyment), which in turn meant double the work for Luca!
As a side note, CDPR ended with about 360 hours worth of recordings from Keanu for his role as Johnny!
Thank you, samurai, wouldn't have been the same with less of you.
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I wonder if there’s a bunch of stuff that was left on the cutting room floor. If so, it would be nice if they found a way to add some of that in.
Even more than that, he’s directly responsible for some of Johnny’s dialogue, and worked with Mike Pondsmith to flesh out a lot of his undefined backstory, even though it basically never comes up in game, just so that he’d know exactly what kind of delivery Johnny would give if he was privately thinking about his own past’s relevance to something.
Idris Elba did a similar thing with Reed, and also came up with an entire biography for the musician/DJ Mr. Kipper, so the music he contributed to the radio playlists would have a complete backstory. I’ve also heard, though don’t know for sure, that the ending for the Lizzy Wizzy side quest was rewritten because Grimes requested a more complex character, because she got super into the lore and themes, and was interested in portraying the actual real-time process of someone going cyberpsycho.
People went *hard* on this game, across the board, and you can really feel the love they put into it.
On the other hand, how would the game have looked, if they had not turned it into “The Ballad of Johnny Silverhand”? What was their initial vision?
He really said “That doesn’t work for me choom”
(plz tell me there are some wrestling fans here to get the reference)
And the rest is glorious history
I still say that Silverhand is probably Keanu’s best performance
He is quite breadtaking.
God I loved his performance so much and I was beyond ecstatic when they said he’d be back for Phantom Liberty.
“360 hours of recordings”
#releasethejohnnytapes
Thank Keanu
John Wick and Cyberpunk 2077 saved this man’s career. In fact when John Wick first came out, they had a hard time securing a theatrical release because of how many bad movies Keanu starred in like 47 Ronin
I remember back in 2017 that this was the case. He went to the CDPR Studios and looked at the role and they expanded it for him.
He did a GREAT Job but I would have prefer Less Johnny Silverhand